This past winter I ran a series of posts entitled “Things I Like” endorsing geeky things that I actually use every day. This highly successfuly series lasted an entire week (two full posts!) and plugged both TaskBar Shuffle and Google Trends. Well today the Things I Like series makes its triumphant return with: MapMyRun.com!
MapMyRun.com is an appropriately titled site that indeed, maps out your run. For those web-enthusiasts unfamliar with this concept - it’s like walking, but faster, and with an intended purpose of “excercise”.
Fundamentally, MMR is a Google Maps mashup that allows you to simply click to chart out a course, then it tells you how far the distance is. MapMyRun.com is a Freemium site and there are many, many other features, including savable and shareable maps, place markers for rest stops, a workout calculator, as well as an option to import/export to GPS systems. Most (all) of these features are probably better for real runners, but don’t worry, MapMyRun.com isn’t just for fitness freaks - it has many other everyday uses (I mean, why do you think I like it?).
I like MMR because I can plan out the time it will take to walk somewhere, or figure out the most direct way to walk through the Financial District of Boston, an area that has almost no right angles, or the difference between walking and taking the T, or, like last week, when I walk all over town for some stupid reason and I want to figure out exactly how stupid this trip was…
This is a screen cap (in the premium version of MMR you can export - which is good because apparently my lines all shifted about 100 yards west somehow) of the 9.14 miles I walked last week to visit four AT&T stores in search of a pre-release HTC Fuze.
Yes, that is three trips over the Longfellow Bridge. Fortunate moral of this ridiculous story is that I did indeed get my hands on a Fuze before it was released… WELL worth the walk!
But anyway - give MapMyRun a try and let me know what you think.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 am
Zach - this is exactly what MMR should be used for…I mean who are these people that actually use it for….mapping their run? Come on…no one does that. The only people that use it are people like us who are interested in how messed up our actual internal sense of direction are. I once used it to determine how many miles it would be from Portland, ME to Nantucket via boat….you know….in case I owned one sometime in the future and I wanted to make that trip……
November 24th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Zach,
A similar website, gmap-pedometer.com, is something I’ve been using for this purpose for years, but it looks like this might be a more comprehensive… I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks!!
Kate
November 25th, 2008 at 8:25 am
@Kate
YES! I completely forgot about Gmap Pedometer but have used it extensively.
It’s great because you can record directions and send them to people. I live on a street in Boston that some maps have never heard of (and many cabbies don’t believe exists), so when I have people over I send them a saved Gmap Pedometer with walking directions from the T. Awesome, awesome technology.